Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday November 19, 2010 @07:28AM
from the still-a-few-more-old-franchises-to-resurrect dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As discussed on Slashdot earlier this year, the lack of a next-generation Wii may be hurting Nintendo. That doesn't seem to concern the company's US chief, Reggie Fils-Aime, who said this week that a Wii 2 might not appear until 2012. He wants to sell a few million more consoles before a successor is launched. So, no Wii 2 for 2010 or 2011 — meanwhile, the PS3 and Xbox consoles get motion control support and other content enhancements. What does that mean for the success of Nintendo's gaming console business? Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?"

I would like to see 3d gaming, i.e. game console support for the 3d displays all the major LCD manufacturers are coming out with. By 2012 3d might be a more-or-less standard feature in new TVs.

Yeah, I know most of slashdot hates 3d TV, doesn't think graphics matter in games, etc, etc.. but c'mon, gaming is the perfect application, because you actually DO have a 3d representation of the world that supports selecting your own viewpoint. For certain types of games such as car driving games, I think 3d coul

The Wii only started losing steam this past year, and they still sell boatloads of them every month. Granted, it's a much smaller boat than it was before, but they are still moving units. Even though the current generation of consoles are starting to directly impact [livingwithanerd.com] the potential complexity of games, they still have a bit of life left in them...Wii included. Here's to hoping that Nintendo focuses more on the hardware this time. Don't get me wrong, there have been some amazing games released for the Wii (Muramasa: The Demon Blade being one of the better ones), but I'd like to see more emphasis on gaming prowess rather than a focus on the "general" market.

Not that I expect that to happen; Nintendo is a business, after all...

It's the nature of the console market to be outdated the day they are released.They require parts that are relatively reliable and mass-produced and need a stable hardware spec well before the release date.OTOH, when I buy a game for X360, I'm pretty sure it'll work without problems on my X360. Not so much of a certainty when buying a PC game.

In what country? Wii didn't come out in Hong Kong and China until 2009, but it was out three years earlier in most of the western industrialized world. I couldn't tell from your Homepage or Journal because you haven't provided any. I just checked your posting history, and comments such as this [slashdot.org], this [slashdot.org], and this [slashdot.org] that you're at least familiar with the U.S. market.

Remember the fact that the Wii *hardware* made a profit from day 1, while the PS3 and the 360 sold at a loss for many many years.

What have they been doing with all that cash? R&D of course. Do you actually think Nintendo is just sitting around on their hands? They are not stupid.

In all likelihood they are just laughing their butts off at Sony and Microsoft pushing over themselves playing catch-up, meanwhile sitting on some revolutionary new console that will be surprise announced in the summer to come out next Xmas.

They already surprise-announced a revolutionary new console*, it's the 3DS. They won't want to split their marketing efforts between two new machines at once. The Wii's more likely to be in line for a soft relaunch with a lot of Motionplus titles and a big push on online support, not a replacement.

What was it? The R&D department for the Wii was about 5-7 people and their system was based off old technology slapped on a Gamecube. I'm not dismissing the success of the Wii, but perhaps their R&D is not for hardware, but for marketing. The casual gamer is a goldmine, that's what makes Nintendo so successful.

I was under the impression that their reasons for sticking with the older hardware had nothing to do with keeping the price down, but rather a way to keep things more familiar for developers. Since they were going to have to be learning an entirely new control scheme, Nintendo didn't want devs to have to deal with complex new hardware as well ("hardware" independent of the control mechanisms, obviously.) Now that developers (kind of) have a handle on the motion controls, Nintendo can give them more powerf

Iwata makes $770K ($2.1M with possible bonuses). Miyamoto earns under $700K ($1.4M with possible bonuses). The other 4 top guys earn around $500K ($1.2M to $1.6M with bonuses). Those incomes are tiny, both when compared to other companies in their industry, and considering the billions in profit the company makes ($2.43 billion last year, $2.99 billion the year before, and those are actual profits, not just revenue).

Actually, a bad dev kit can just about kill a platform in the absence of any other problems with the console. If you're not mindful about what registers to include and how well the dev kit works, you can easily stall yourself out of the critical period around launch.

A cheap and familiar Wii is both good for Nintendo and good for developers

A cheap Wii with a very similar-to-the-Gamecube development kit means profits for Nintendo in development and manufacturing, and it means cheap and fast development process for Wii developers. If developers have a console to experiment on (thanks to low cost), they try new things and make lots of Wii games. This not only makes Nintendo money from the games produced, but makes both Nintendo and the companies money from the increased au

Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?

Erm, that depends. If "out-innovated" means "finally caught up to with motion-control designs" (albeit ones that either look stupid or probably require much bigger rooms, like the PS2 EyeToy used to) then yes. If "out-innovated" keeps its old definition of "now have a smaller share of original features that they implemented first and are seen as lacking because of it" then I wouldn't be so sure.

Unless they can come up with something very new, and very original, and something that's a lot better than just an incremental improvement to their current system, I don't think they are going to be a serious competitor in the industry after the next generation of consoles has run its course.

What makes it even worse is that Nintendo is probably going to have to depend heavily on backward compatibility in their next generation console, which limits the directions they can take with it.

This, I think, is it for them. I think they might be down and out for the count.

I remember when Atari was king of the consoles with the 2600... but they didn't innovate quickly enough as competitors came out either.

It's not arguably the most successful console this generation. It flat out is the most successful console this generation by any reasonable metric. The Wii has practically sold more units than the PS3 and 360 combined. It dominates software sales, too. And unlike the PS3 and 360, the Wii was selling for a profit from day 1, meaning Nintendo has been making money off it from day 1. The only console that could reasonably compete with it in terms of "success" would be the DS. Nintendo is in an amazing position right now.

... another rumor of Nintendo's impending collapse. Just because the two main competitors - neither of whom have matched the Wii sales numbers with their latest consoles - have released motion controls, is not enough to claim that Nintendo will be gone next week. Neither the PS3 nor the XBox 360 controls have been out long enough to have any sense of how often they will be implemented in upcoming games.

Right now the Kinect is $200 and the PS3 Motion is $100 plus $70/controller according to Amazon. So just to add motion control to the 360, you have to shell out what you would for a new Wii. You can get a Wii used from Gamestop with a decent warranty for $120. And browsing the Kinect games, they look like the same stuff available on the Wii: some Sonic knock-offs, the EA exercise stuff, Deca Sports... Unless the Kinect and Motion can put out some must-have titles, people who don't already own a 360 or PS3 will likely opt for the Wii.

My Wii sits unused (hardy har har) while I occasionally use my 360. The Wii turned out to be a gimmick. Odds are Kinect will be the same, and it will sell few games, and we'll be over motion detection for another couple generations.

I keep hoping someone will come up with a cheap eyetap so we can get into reality overlay gaming. I want more motivation to go outside. I'm imagining some kind of multiplayer wizard battle game, that's something you could meaningfully do without endangering people.

I wouldn't say Wii turned out to be a gimmick - it just meets different needs than a 360, for example. The 360 has better games...there is no doubt about that...but it has better games for a specific audience. You wouldn't find my grandmother playing Call of Duty or anything like that, but sit her down and play Mario Party 8, and she has a blast. Just because Wii doesn't fit *your* particular demographic doesn't mean it's a gimmick. (In fact, quite the opposite - the fact that 360 and PS3 are trying to copy

Was it a gimmick? If you've got a 360, the odds are fairly good that you're not the core demographic driving the wii sales. The biggest problem that the Wii has is the space requirement, and I think Sony is the only one of the three that's apparently dealt with that. MS seeming to think that we all have living rooms the size of a high school gym.

Kinnect is a $150... not the two hundred as you claim. And you can always pick one up used from ebay if you like. And I'm guessing the majority of Kinnect purchasers already own the XBox. That said, having recently played the Kinnect I will say that I was underwhelmed. I found the lag to be bothersome and the games I played were forgettable. The voice navigation just sucked often requiring us to pick up the controller to actually do what we wanted to do. I will say it was a blast watching the kids p

I just looked up the price on Amazon. According to them, the only Kinect hardware I see is Kinect Sensor with Kinect Adventures [amazon.com] for $197. Pardon my ignorance if that's more than retail. I really don't know.

Exactly. I'd say it's more of a case of the competitors closing a gap on the Wii, while the Wii is still significantly cheaper than either.

Plus you have to consider that since every single Wii ever sold has motion control out of the box, every single game can be developed with motion control as a standard feature. For the PS3 and Xbox... developers have to consider developing games for consoles that may or MAY NOT have motion control capabilities. Remember folks, this is an EXTRA COST option on PS3 and Xbox... it means you can't take it for granted that motion control is available. As a developer you have to support both non-motion control and motion control controller interfaces for your games on those platforms.

From a dev point of view I'd much rather develop for the Wii than to have to take this into account. For the Xbox and PS3, the early adopters have already bought the "upgrades"... where does the growth then come from now that the honeymoon is over? I'd be interested to see the installed-base numbers of consoles vs. motion control devices sold separately. Probably not a pretty picture.

Aren't you more likely to need to extend the living room if you go with the Kinect? The optimal distance from the sensor is 6' for single player, 8' for two player (and that's not including the space you need to leave around yourself so you don't bump into things). I think that will be the single biggest issue with Kinect - the technology seems great and there is definitely potential there if it works as promises, but particularly here in Europe, just having the physical space to play is a problem.

I read the 2 available and none adressed the console as anything more than spec sheets. Unless I can stick the spec sheet in the Wii slot and play it, I really don't care what's on it. Which ties right back in to my final point above: MS and Sony need must-have titles for their motion controllers and right now I don't see them. Maybe they will come in time, but it's a bit premature to say the Wii has nothing going for it when Nintendo is still making games exclusively for their own

The Wii's game catalogue will look a whole lot better now that both the 360 and PS3 have their very own shovelware minigame motion system platform to lower the overall quality of their software releases.

Nintendo has been in business for a lot longer than almost any company you can name (1889!) and have seen off some enormous rivals several times (Sega, Atari, etc.).

Nintendo make profit on almost everything they release.

Nintendo make big releases every now and again, stringing them on with life support in the form of games that turn out to become famous in their own right.

When Nintendo do plop down a new console it's invariably innovative and top-of-its-game (not necessarily the best hardware, but definitely better in gaming terms).

Nintendo is an inventor. They toil away in their little sheds for years in complete secrecy until one day they walk out, plop something into a business person's hands and blow everyone away. Then while the market are still reeling from that, they just wander quietly back into their shed and aren't seen for another few years when they rinse and repeat.

Precisely BECAUSE they aren't saying "Oh, no, our competitors have something new, we have to copy it in our own way and get back into the game" is why they are able to do what they do. They don't really care about Kinect, or anything else - they have money enough to last a decade, and that gives them a decade to make something even more spectacular without having to worry about the day-to-day running of the businesses. Wiis are still being sold but they have enough to go back into their shed and devote the next few years to R&D and playtesting which the other rivals *cannot*. They will have their own ideas, which might work (Wii) or might flop (VirtualBoy) but will be away from the conventional elements of the time that are competing in the market. And when they deliver their next invention, people will give them millions and, because of using their brains and not just throwing expensive hardware at a problem, they will invariably make profit on every unit sold.

It's also true that they decide what they want in the next, say, Mario game. They decide what they want to be able to do. Then they build a console around that, not the other way around.

You can try to make Nintendo look foolish and show how "you know better" if you want, but invariably you will end up with egg on your face. Nintendo know their market better than anyone - they almost single-handedly invented it. Leave them be. The "Wii 2" (which it will almost certainly NEVER be named) will be to the Wii what the Wii was to the Gamecube, or the Gamecube to the N64, or the N64 to the SNES, or the SNES to the NES, or the equivalent trail in the handheld markets. It will take years to arrive - you'll have just about forgotten about your Wii and Nintendo will be absent from the market for a year or so - and then it'll blow your socks off. After a few months people will complain that it doesn't do X or Y or that it's "outdated" or "underpowered" while Nintendo will have another decade's research money under their belt and be working on the next one.

Nintendo know what they are doing. Sod Wii 2. I want whatever the next stage is - which will be more advanced gameplay-wise than anything on the market in the next few years.

It's still the best selling console of 2010 worldwide. Last week put it between the xbox 360 and PS3 in sales. I'd love to be failing this well. Yes, we know it lacks power and the oomph of the motion controller is not that big anymore. But there's no xbox 720, PS4 or whatever announced yet either. Nintendo don't want to show their hand so early that Microsoft and Sony can copy it for their launches. Either they have to wait for another console rematch, or they have to play for a "helf-generation" console t

When anyone announces their next-generation console, the scramble is on.

Historically it has been a 7-year cycle. The Wii came out in 2006. That places the Wii 2 (Electric Bugaloo) somewhere in 2013.

I still play my Wii, though I'm a casual gamer who generally avoids one-player games. Right now Kirby's Epic Yarn is getting a small bit of my attention. I'm caught between thinking it's a fun, simple game and the realization that it was designed for 8-year-olds (note: I'm 28). In any case, it's enjoyable. That's all video games need to achieve... if people have a good time p

I really don't care what age a game was designed for. If it's fun, it's fun. If it has a good mechanic and control scheme and lets me skip any cutscenes that piss on my mind, it's a good game. Better crap graphics than crap input. I want my framerate, but other than that, for some games the graphics on the Atari VCS are overkill.

Anyone who's been a gamer for a while should know that Nintendo has always been like this; they HATE developing new consoles. They have to be dragged kicking and screaming by their competitors. I think it's an outgrowth of their two consoles that pretty much monopolized the market for several years, the NES and the Game Boy, which were great for them; didn't have to budget R&D, just had to sit back and collect the licensing fees. In fact, I forget which console it was (this was back a few years), but

The five-year-rule is a long-standing tradition for console generations going back to the Atari days (even through several recessions and the console "collapse" of 1982). Both the 360 and PS3 are starting to show their age at this point (especially the 360, which doesn't even have a blu-ray drive), with no new console generation on the horizon. The 360 is now 5 years old and the PS3 is 4, and neither has even announced a new console generation. I'm tired of my console dropping further and further behind PC's, while all MS and Sony want to do is release lame Wii knockoff controllers. I'm tired of consoles that aren't powerful enough to handle MMO's, require multiple disc swaps to support the latest games, and slow to a crawl with modern high res textures.

Screw Nintendo, and screw Move and Kinect. Give me a new console generation!

That's invariable, if you could put in a new graphics card or RAM it wouldn't really be a console anymore. The XBox 360 in particular is really testing the limits of what can reasonably be called a console, as it's more or less a standard computer with a custom OS. At least the PS3 has a non-standard processor.

The five-year-rule is a long-standing tradition for console generations going back to the Atari days (even through several recessions and the console "collapse" of 1982). Both the 360 and PS3 are starting to show their age at this point (especially the 360, which doesn't even have a blu-ray drive), with no new console generation on the horizon. The 360 is now 5 years old and the PS3 is 4, and neither has even announced a new console generation. I'm tired of my console dropping further and further behind PC's, while all MS and Sony want to do is release lame Wii knockoff controllers. I'm tired of consoles that aren't powerful enough to handle MMO's, require multiple disc swaps to support the latest games, and slow to a crawl with modern high res textures.

Screw Nintendo, and screw Move and Kinect. Give me a new console generation!

The only "new" thing in Console technology recently HAS been motion/video control.- Wii came out with motion controllers.- PS3 came out with video controllers.- 360 came out with an updated video controller.- PS3 came out with video augmented motion controller.

Sony has stated that they foresaw a 10 year lifespan for the PS3. We're now into year 4 and I don't see any indication the Console itself needs to be redesigned. Considering they are still selling PS2s, now in its 10th year, I'd say this is fairly l

The next MS console will not have a Blu-Ray drive. You don't honestly think Microsoft is going to pay its number one competitor for every unit shipped, do you? I doubt it will even have a disc drive at all. Say goodbye to bringing games to your friends' house and the second hand game market.

Honestly, it sounds like you would do better with a PC, what with all the modern high res MMO playing you do. Don't look for love in a coffin, and don't play games with no true ending on

Because I hate PC controls, can't play a PC game on my couch, got sick of trying to figure out if I had the right video card/what settings I had to run at/if I needed to upgrade/paying for constant upgrades/etc. I like the ergonomic analog controller. I like the fact that I never have to worry about compatibility issues and upgrades only come along every five years. And I like the simplicity and ease of Xbox Live.

I also like the fact that I can buy and sell my games used. I buy almost all of my games used (

I honestly think that the Wii is just fine. Its targeted at casual gamers, whereas 360 seems to be the young gamer crowd and PS3 seems to be the more hardcore gamers. By giving the Wii time on the market they're just going to build up an immense game library. I do think Kinect may throw a wrench in nintendo's machine though. The kinect is the first peripheral I've ever seen that has made game-o-phobes interested in playing. My girlfriends mother for example, was given a wii. She got frustrated when she kept

They aren't too excited about rushing a product to sale for a couple of reasons

The main reason is...they don't NEED to. The Wii is still the number one seller out there, and has universal appeal. The PS3 is the elite blue ray graphics console, and the 360 is the FPS console. Both have their niches. The Wii won't be in trouble because everyone, from 8 year olds to grandmas in assisted living centers, can and does play the Wii. Yeah, the "gamer" niche isn't there, but really, that market isn't that big i

"Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?"

Umm, in case you didn't notice, the 3DS is Nintendo's next big innovation. The next Wii will follow after that. Nintendo doesn't just throw a bunch of shit against the wall and sees what sticks, like Sony does. They make a concentrated effort and focus.

I anticipated this would happen from the start. Even back at the release of the Wii the limited power of the hardware and the standard definition graphics was a sore point. The novelty of the controllers, however generally beat back those concerns, at least initially. But then it also become apparent that while the Wiimote is great with some games with many others it hinders gameplay. And things were worse when cross-platform games where significantly scaled back for the Wii.

"Today the Wii’s biggest drawback is its diminutive hardware specs and options. There’s no high-definition playback and no significant built-in storage,"
This is what they were saying at launch, and it never made a difference. I still don't care that I can't play blu-ray discs, I don't have any, but I can play all the old gamecube games that the kids still love, and the Wii just has too many killer games. People laughed when the new controllers were announced back when it was called Revolution

This is the same exact article that's been coming out since well before the Wii was released. Underpowered systems are definitely doomed. Without an update they're screwed. The Wii has relegated to the scrap heap by articles like this for 4 years now, the author really, really wants graphic quality to be the main determinant of game console sales, and the article is another sad attempt to prove that personal belief but is contradicted by reality. Hardcore gamers might care a lot, but most people don't gi

I've had a Wii since launch. I have over a hundred games, and I'd say there is around 20 that are triple A titles worth bying a Wii for.

For the next Wii I'd really like to see:

proper 1080p HD gfx - imagine how good SMG would look, for example, or SMBW in glorious 1080p. Sonic Unleashed has some impressive gfx engine as well. Even Gutiar hero looks better on 360 than Wii, and that's just stupid shapes moving on a screen.

the Wii was cool but the problem is that it's processing power is the slowest of the bunch. i've read that MS had to gimp Kinect a little because it requires a lot of CPU power. Nintendo is going to have come up with something else or put some processing power in their next console.

The original Kinect did its processing in hardware, IIRC. I believe that they cut that out due to the cost of it all. Check out the Open Kinect group on Google Groups; there's a good bit of information to be found, and more in the IRC chatroom.

Why would they bother? Microsoft and Sony are skipping a new generation of consol in favor of adding motion control to existing systems. Even with a year's delay,Nintendo will beat Microsoft and Sony to the next generation console. They still have good motion control and can draw from the Wii as well as Kinect for a new generation. Nintendo is in excellent shape.

No, Microsoft and Sony beat Nintendo to the next-generation console while Nintendo released an updated GameCube. Wii is to GameCube as Game Boy Color is to Game Boy or PSP-3000 is to PSP-1000: much the same hardware with higher clock speed, more RAM, and some new I/O.

Exactly, Nintendo just stopped playing the next-gen game. Rather than trying to beat Sony and Microsoft by being better they decided to be different and work the casual gaming market. It seems like Microsoft and Sony are the ones playing catch-up with Nintendo with the Kinect and Move respectively.

Had they called their current console "Wi" instead of "Wii" they could have just tacked that single 'i' for the 2.0 version instead of adding an entire '2' and thus rising the length of the console's name to 4 characters.Just think of the money they could have saved in marketing by saving all that ink, commercial time, reusing old characters and such.Not to mention all that accumulated saving down the road with Wii3 (Wiii) and Wii4 (WiW).

They must be kicking themselves in the ass right now for being so shor

As far as Move goes, I don't see that as out-innovating the Wii. From my point of view, the PS3 is several years more advanced than the Wii (in both the base hardware and the motion control hardware), they've had years more of research to benefit from (both their own research and what others in the industry and academia have researched and demonstrated), they have the benefit several years of sitting back and learning from the Wii's mistakes and shortcomings, and with all of that benefit they've managed to brute force a solutions that is only slightly more capable than the Wii, and looks stupid and inelegant in the process.

As far as Kinect goes, I have a lot of respect for what they've done there. Rather than just tracking the position of some sex-toy-looking orbs, it actually analyzes the scene to extract skeletal structure information from the players movement. It's quite technologically advanced. Very impressive in the way it operates and the capabilities it provides. Yet the one thing that REALLY bugs me about it is that it is a purely controller-less design. Being able to play controller-less is pretty cool, but a lot of games will suffer or be impractical without buttons to press. Using an existing controller 2-handed kind of defeats the purpose of Kinect's advanced capabilities, the existing 360 controllers aren't conducive to single-hand use, and releasing a future add-on-controller-for-the-add-on-kinect is just completely out of the question.

So no, I don't really feel that the Wii has been out-innovated much. Move is pretty pathetic and uninspired considering how much later it came than the Wii, and Kinect is really impressive and innovative in ways but has a fatal flaw. I think it will take until the next generation before someone truly outdoes the Wii (when they can combine the Kinect's sensor technology with the Wii/Move controller system)

Analysts are looking as far ahead as 2014 for XBox Kinnect [eurogamer.net]. Sony has also said that there's 10 years of life in PS3 [fastcompany.com]. So if Nintendo comes with a new concept that is as groundbreaking as Wii (in terms of tech and/or marketing) in 2012 then they sure as hell haven't been outpaced by either Microsoft or Sony.

There have been 'improvements' on what Nintendo did - but I wouldn't really call yet another motion sensor an 'innovation'. (Think how many MSFT 'innovations' you just yawned at, as they were things that existed elsewhere long ago).

Nintendo innovated the console market by bringing those controllers.

It was Sony/Microsoft who jumped on it later - to claw back marketshare lost to Nintendo.

In much the same way - in the phone world, the iPhone was the innovation. There is virtually no new phone that doesn't jus

Has the innovator been out-innovated due to a sluggish product roadmap?

Counterpoint:

No.

Nintendo pretty much has a different market segment of casual gamers. Younger kids who are into the franchise (Pokemon, Mario, etc. and other exclusives are all over the elementary schools... never heard anyone there ever mention Halo or even Final Fantasy). Kids don't care about system specs... hell, they won't even watch TV if it's not a cartoon, so I surmise they actually expect the cartoony "8-bit look" as a sign that a game is actually "for them".

Finally, the hardcore gamers will have a Wii anyway just for the heck of it.

Nintendo can milk this cow, the Wii teat, for a while longer. Then once publishers actually start releasing interesting games for the PS3 and Kinect motion controls, they can come out with the next big thing out of cycle.

I surmise it would be some kind of augmented reality thing, so they can sell more cheap widgets with each game, that the kids will bring to school and lose and have to be replaced.

It's not that the Wii was a revolution it was that most people got it for Wii sports and Wii fit. The original NES pad was more simple then the Wii mote.

The Wii has had a profitable run, but a profitable run does not mean bad things are not happening to the gaming market, the lack of games on the Wii due to not having competitive hardware power hurt its gaming library for cross platform games. Nintendo may have been profitable, but in the eyes of tr

I have mod points, but decided to reply instead:
The Wii is not a direct competitor for the PS3/Xbox360. You know how I know this? Because most gamers I know own both a Wii and one of the PS3/Xbox360 (usually the 360). This shows that the Wii is sufficiently dissimilar to the 360 to not be a competitor, that it is something different in terms of gaming.

I'm _glad_ that Nintendo decided to take a step back from the graphics arms race this generation and focus on the control scheme. It has forced them to really remember that what matters is the game itself, not how it looks. You're taking potshots at Wii games that you don't like, but that is only your opinion. I've been a Nintendo fanboy since 1985 and I can tell you that I fucking love Metroid. Always have. I also love Super Mario Bros, and I think that the New Super Mario Bros game is fantastic. Nintendo made some really smart moves with this console, aiming it squarely between the eyes of early 30-something parents, people that have been playing Nintendo from the start and have kids. You know what is interesting? My 5 year old daughter loves to play the Wii more than any other game console in the house (I have a few... Dreamcast/PS2/Gamecube/2 360's/PS1) and what does she play on it? Sidescrollers. She loves the sidescrollers. and she beats them! It was pure genius on the part of Nintendo to make the Wiimote into a sidewise NES controller, and pure genius again to offer the classic NES games for impulse buy prices. After a few beers, $5 Mike Tyson's PunchOut sounds like a great idea! To summarize, The Wii is not competition to the 360, and I'm glad. I own both, and play both.

"Wii was the first console I've bought since Atari 5200. Made a 9 year old really happy!"

I understand that but what you're referring to is demographic shift - i.e. everything old is new again, bot for long time gamers who've grown up with games, the quality has been going down and that is quite worrisome, for those who are new and whose first games are recent releases, they do not have the experience to judge what has occurred.

iPhone was never revolutionary, we always had a lot of multitouch phones with a full browser, easy to install apps, and features that even mere mortals can figure out (which ones??).

Aside from the multitouch phone, that describes pretty much any Nokia smartphone in the last 5 years.

Full browser: they included Opera, then switched to a WebKit-based browser a bit before the iPhone was released (you realise that the work to make WebKit run in something with as little memory as an iPhone was done by Nokia, right?).

Easy to install apps? Sure, just copy it across and hit install. Can be accomplished via bluetooth (select the file, hit 'send to device' on your computer - no wires), by

Aside from the multitouch phone, that describes pretty much any Nokia smartphone in the last 5 years.

Wait, are you using Nokia as an example of 'great smartphones we had before the iPhone was released'? Nokia, of all cellphone manufacturs?? You mean NOKIA, which is now struggling to stay relevant because they didn't have a single real touchscreen smartphone worth a dime until the N900 came along? Nokia, who only introduced their first decent touchscreen phone less than two years ago?

That's hilarious... I've owned at least 6 Nokia phones over the last 10 year, and if there is ANY phone brand that has missed the smartphone boat completely, it's Nokia. Their dumbphones and feature phones are great and I loved them, but please, if Nokia is what you first think of when someone takes the first iPhone as the benchmark for all later smartphones, you either don't know Nokia, or you don't know the iPhone. The last Nokia I bought was a 5800, which is only 1 or 1.5 years old, and while it was a pretty decent phone for calling and texting, it can't hold a candle to even the first generation iPhone. The browser was near-unusable (slow, buggy, didn't render many sites properly), the touchscreen was pretty unresponsive (resistive) and there were almost no applications available that used the touchscreen properly (which wasn't surprising because it was the first S60r5 phone, which was the first symbian version to even support touchscreens in the first place).

I have to concur with the PP, people get used to revolutionary products so fast they assume there was nothing revolutionary about it in the first place. The iPhone is a good example, but there are many more.

For example, Wii's controllers aren't revolutionary, we had those for a long time (where??).

Arcades. The Wii was a direct outgrowth of similar devices in arcades.

Another example: iPhone was never revolutionary, we always had a lot of multitouch phones with a full browser, easy to install apps, and features that even mere mortals can figure out (which ones??).

Huh? Who said we had multitouch phones? All you have to do is add that to your list to suddenly exclude all other phones, while at the same time implying that none of these other phones have the other characteristics you have on your list. Apple did not invent smartphones.

mmm
I agree with you in the controllers. We had all the tech, but no one glued it together the way Nintendo did.

On the other hand GP was talking about the iPod, not the iPhone. Today almost everywhere people talk about iPod as a generic term referring to mp3 players. Truth is, the iPod came out years after consumer - portable - mp3 players where popular. That's good Marketing!

The iPod was the first hard-drive based MP3 player with a pocket-able form factor. Before the iPod, you had a choice of a small flash-based player or a brick player that used a laptop hard drive. The iPod was the first to split the middle size-wise and use the new Toshiba mini drives. It also looked nice, felt solid, and was compelling enough that it sold to many Windows users even though it was initially Mac-only.

5GB doesn't sound like much today, and it was certainly not as much as the Nomad had - but it

The iPhone was basically just an iPod except as a cell phone and the App store is basically just the ITMS for apps. There wasn't anywhere near as much innovation there as people seem to think. Sure they took the buttons away, but Steve Jobs would take away the buttons on a TV if he could get away with it, the man hates buttons with a passion.

It's easy to call the iPhone revolutionary if you ignore the ideas and technology they took from elsewhere. It doesn't magically become revolutionary simply because

When Wii was released/. and other forums said "The Wii will fail. Nobody wants gimmicky motion controls or a measly 480p resolution. The Wii will end-up in 2nd place just like the Gamecube, while Sony or microsoft take the top spot." - So I consider it revolutionary if only because Nintendo (and some fanboys) was the only 1 who believed it would succeed. Everyone else thought motion control was a dumb idea.

As for the Wii Part 2: I think if Nintendo released it now, they run the risk that it could en

Indeed, I'm guessing that what's probably happening is that they're taking advantage of the Wii to delay the successor as long as they can. Presumably they're going to use the extra time to improve it to the point where it's even better.

Then, as far as I can tell from the FAQ [slashdot.org], max your karma to Excellent and keep it near the cap for a year. After that are some steps that I don't understand; I've never had mod points despite sitting at the cap for years. Once you have mod points, use "Insightful".

Sorry, I was on the school network and forgot to login. At the time it was easier to post AC. Since I am replying I can't mod anymore but I guess the comment would have made more sense/been funnier had I posted using my account.

I've been here for a few years and I get mod points just about every week. They also gave the option to disable ads, which is cool. There is something about modding "+1 insightful" on/. though.... from my perspective it usually means "I agree with you".